


A Chance Encounter in San Francisco

by the_glow_worm



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: Drinking, M/M, No one has sex. I know. It's very disappointing.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 11:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7799185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_glow_worm/pseuds/the_glow_worm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night in San Francisco, Lev, sitting alone in a bar, runs into the last person he expected to see: Joe Macmillan.</p>
<p>And then they have many, many drinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Chance Encounter in San Francisco

The comfortable burn of vodka had not quite washed away his doubts when a stranger slid into the seat next to him. Lev lifted his head up, hopeful that one of the young, good-looking guys in the corner had come over to talk. But the stranger was older, much older, a thatch of hair combed over his balding forehead. Otherwise he wasn’t bad looking, maybe, but there was a desperate look of intent in his eyes that reminded him uncomfortably of the men who had left him for dead in an alley. He said,

 

“Bit young to be at the bar alone, aren’t you?”

 

“Um, no, not really,” mumbled Lev, looking down. The man’s knee was very close to his own. There was a stain on his pant leg.

 

“Really? Because you look like jailbait.” He didn’t sound as if he minded. “Why don’t you finish your drink so I can buy you a new one?”

 

“Uh,” said Lev. Words were apparently not happening for him right now. “N-no, I don’t think so…”

 

“Ah, come on. Just one—”

 

A broad expanse of back and shoulder appeared in his vision, blocking out the pant stain. Lev looked up, wide-eyed. He recognized the arrogant tilt to that head. No one else he knew carried himself that way.

 

“Excuse us,” said Joe Macmillan, casual menace in every syllable. “You’re interrupting our evening.”

 

There was a momentary pause, and then a scuffing sound as the man vacated the seat. Joe swung himself into his place. Lev stared. Joe caught his eyes and raised his eyebrows. _Admiral Eyebrows_ , Lev thought all of a sudden, and had to stifle the crazy urge to giggle.

 

“You looked a little distressed,” offered Joe. “Was I wrong?”

 

“What? No. Um, he was being a creep.”

 

“I’m sorry to hear it.” He flagged down the bartender, who arrived much faster than he had for Lev. A second later, a whiskey and coke magically appeared in Joe’s hand.

 

“So,” he said. “How have you been?”

 

“No offense,” blurted out Lev, “no offense, but like, why are you here?”

 

There was a moment when Joe’s face was utterly and totally blank, and Lev thought that he might be screwed.  And then he smiled in that charming way he had, his lashes coming down over his cheekbones almost bashfully.

 

“To get laid,” he said without hesitation. “And you?”

 

“This is a gay bar,” said Lev.

 

“Right.”

 

“For… men. To meet men?”

 

“Right,” said Joe.

 

“Oh. Uh, okay.” Lev was getting flustered. He was suddenly very aware of the triangle of skin revealed by the cut of Joe’s shirt. He used to fantasize about those cheekbones before he realized that they belonged to an asshole. “No more questions.”

 

When he looked up, Joe had been studying him appraisingly.

 

“You look better than the last time I saw you,” he said, his voice going soft. His hand hovered over Lev’s mouth and throat. “No breathing tubes.”

 

Lev turned away and hunched over his drink, defensive. “No need to bring that up, man,” he mumbled.

 

Joe withdrew his hand. “Sorry,” he said, and it was weird, but he really did sound like he meant it. “I was worried about you.”

 

“That’s new,” muttered Lev. “Wait, when the hell did you see me with breathing tubes?”

 

“When I visited you in the hospital.”

 

“You did what.”

 

Joe smiled, a little more loosely than he usually did. “I’ve always liked you, Lev.”

 

Lev shot him a brief, startled look. “I’m not sure how to feel about that,” he said.

 

“Feel how you like about it,” said Joe, dismissive. He swayed forward with the easy self-confidence of Joe Macmillan or, possibly, a drunken man. “Personally, I’ve never found that my feelings have affected those of others in the slightest.”

 

“Uh, are we still talking about me?”

 

“The thing is,” he continued, as if Lev hadn’t spoken, “the thing is…we all exist in such different worlds. There might as well be some uncrossable void between us all. Where it’s black and cold and…distant…” He took a long sip of his drink. “In the end closeness, intimacy, is all an illusion that we’ve conjured in our heads. A shared illusion, at best. We could turn our hearts inside out for all that we can _truly_ connect to each other. Connection...Nevermind. Would you like another drink?”

 

_No,_ he was about to say. _No, because you’re my bosses’ ex and she hates you and you might have almost ruined our company. Also, you’re a real hardass and a prick and all my friends hate you too so, no. No way._

 

“Okay,” said Lev, and wondered how his brain could be this stupid.

 

But Joe was paying the bill, and his conversation was as charming as he remembered, and there was a certain appeal in sitting with—strictly objectively speaking—the most attractive man in the bar. Not that it was helping his confidence any to know that none of the admiring glances thrown in their direction were for him.

 

“I thought it would be easier in San Francisco,” Lev was saying. He wondered where all of this was pouring out from, other than that Joe’s eyes were very dark and very attentive. “You know, I…heard stories and everything. But that, um, hasn’t been the case. Not for me. I chickened out twice tonight about coming here. Uh. I guess you don’t know much about that.”

 

“I know about fear,” said Joe. He waved his empty glass at the bartender.

 

“Right,” said Lev after a pause. “Not this kind, though. Not the kind where you feel it, and it makes you feel small inside. I-I _know_ that’s not something you recognize.”

 

“Yeah? You know that, huh?” The bartender had appeared with another full glass, and he swirled it meditatively. “I suppose that from your perspective that isn’t even wrong.” He chuckled lowly. There was something strained about the sound. His words were beginning to slur. “But yes, Malcolm. I know about fear.”

 

Lev stared at the use of his real name. “Right,” he said again. “Um, I guess now is when you tell me about getting pushed around behind the school gym, or getting rocks thrown at you on the bus? Is that really where you’re going with this?”

 

Joe narrowed his eyes.

 

“What story would I tell that isn’t shared by every man in this bar?” he asked. “But that’s not what you’re afraid of anyway. That’s not what almost kept you home tonight.”

 

 “Well,” mumbled Lev, the wind gone out of him. He pushed around his nearly empty glass on the bartop. “I mean, it’s not like I’m not afraid of _that_ either. For good reason.” His hand reached up and touched the bridge of his nose. It was a different shape than it had used to be. Lev had spent weeks terrified that everyone would notice, that everyone would see the evidence on his face of what an easy mark he was, how _stupid_ he had been, how willingly he had walked into a blind alley just hoping for a kiss. After the shadows he had seen out of every corner had worn off, he realized that no one looked at his face enough to notice.

 

Joe was looking at his face now. Lev dropped his hand from his nose in a hurry, self-conscious, and Joe was the one to look down into his glass.

 

“Never mind.” His eyes flickered back up, and this time Joe was wearing a bit of a smirk. “So California didn’t make your dreams come true, and now you’re here drinking your sorrows away? It’s a bit of a cliché, honestly.”

 

Lev’s lips betrayed him. He smiled, and then confusedly he brought his glass up to hide it.

 

“That’s empty,” said Joe, snatching it away from his mouth. “I’ll get you another. Vodka and lemon, same as before?” The bartender trotted over obediently to receive his orders. Lev had done the same for Joe, once upon a time. It seemed to be a feature, with Joe.

 

Bereft of his glass, Lev fiddled with the frayed edges of his sleeves to have something to do with his hands. He could not occupy his mouth similarly, and the alcohol and the tension loosened his tongue.

 

“You’re being way nicer than you usually are,” he said, before he could think it through. “Why are you acting like we’re friends?”

 

He regretted the question as soon as it left him. Something slid into place behind Joe’s eyes, cold and glassy like a mirror. Lev felt a sudden profound loneliness, the type that he thought he had left behind with high school. His hands pressed against each other.

 

“Sorry,” said Lev. “Sorry, I didn’t—”

 

“Did you hate me?”

 

“—mean to ask, I—what?”

 

“Did you hate me?” he asked again. The bartender had returned with another two glasses, one for each of them. Joe didn’t turn his gaze from Lev’s. His expression was disinterested, even bored, as if he didn’t really care about the answer. But his hand was tense, clenched around itself with the whites of his knuckles showing. “Did I deserve it?”

 

“Um,” managed Lev. “I…”

 

Joe was waiting for the rest of the answer. With an effort of will, Lev tore his gaze away. Joe’s face burned in his vision like an afterimage of an incandescent flash. The music and conversation of the bar swirled around him and pressed at his ears.

 

“…I don’t know.”

 

It was the coward’s answer, but it was also true. Hating Joe McMillan had become a tide they had all been swept along with. When Cameron felt something—rage, or passion, or hate—they all felt it too, or they drowned under it. Donna seemed to be the only one who could keep her head above water. Lev certainly hadn’t been immune. Sitting before the man now, he could not separate what _he_ , Lev, had felt, and what he had been made to feel. It was hard to remember now, through the haze of alcohol and Joe’s faint leathery scent, those emotions he used to feel so strongly.

 

“It’s a pretty simple question,” said Joe.

 

“No it’s not,” said Lev. “It’s n-not, and you know it. Do you hate Cameron?”

 

They both looked at each other at the same time and looked away again.

 

“Bad analogy,” muttered Lev, after a moment. His vodka and lemon was standing before him, and he took it into his hand. “I don’t hate you at the moment, okay? And I won’t, as long you keep buying me drinks.” He moved his glass over and tipped it towards Joe in invitation. “That, uh, was a joke,” he added.

 

It took Joe a moment to smile. When it came, it was as artless as ever, spreading over his face like a light that did not illuminate his eyes.

 

“Good one,” he said, and clinked his glass to Lev’s. Before Lev could say anything more, Joe tossed the drink back in a single motion, revealing the long line of his throat. Lev tried to think back to how many times Joe had emptied his glass that night. He couldn’t remember.

 

Joe had already been drunk when he came to the bar tonight. He had been elsewhere, to another bar. _Why are you here?_ Lev had asked. _To get laid_ , had come the answer, but Joe Macmillan didn’t need much help to find someone to come to bed with him. Why would he have even needed to come to a second bar?

 

He remembered the way the bartender came every time Joe snapped his fingers, as if already familiar with the tip that would await him. How he had known without a word what drink Joe preferred, and to keep them coming. Lev had been sitting in the bar for most of the night. He was sure that their meeting was the first time Joe had been in the bar, but the smell of whiskey had already been on his breath.

 

“Anyway, you don’t want to meet anyone in this bar anyway,” said Joe, as if they hadn’t been talking about anything else. “It’s not your style.”

 

Lev shrugged. “ _You’re_ in this bar.”

  
Joe smiled as if his point had been made. Lev realized again, for about the millionth time, that he was bad at flirting. Straight on the heels of that came the realization that he had been trying to flirt.

 

While Lev sat there horrified at himself, Joe received another glass into his hand. He sipped at it thoughtfully. “I could take you to an art gallery, if you want to meet someone,” he offered. “Or introduce you to some people at my company.”

 

“Oh, god—” Lev briefly imagined himself sipping some kind of fancy wine in front of a painting, or bringing one of Joe’s dark-suited cronies back home to Mutiny. “No, no way. But, uh, thanks.”

 

Joe shrugged. His shoulders were loose, movements sloppy. “I’ll have to take you to something else, then.”

 

A warm flush rolled through him at the attention, pleasurable and slow. _Get it together_ , he told himself sternly, but even the voice inside his head couldn’t quite manage it.

 

Fuck, he was drunk. He scratched at his neck, aware that a red flush was spreading across his cheekbones and not sure what to do about it.

 

“I guess I’d like that,” he mumbled.

 

“You don’t have to agree to anything you don’t want to,” said Joe, perceiving a little too much of his embarrassment. Lev felt an irrational surge of warmth towards him for the thoughtfulness, which lasted until the next breath, when Joe said: “After all, it’s not like I’m your boss anymore.”

 

“Jesus Christ,” said Lev.

 

“Well, it’s true,” said Joe. “No need to be polite about it. Right?” And he laughed. Briefly, and for almost the first time in his life, Lev wished he knew how to throw a punch.

 

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” he said again. “Is everything a power trip with you, man?” The question didn’t come out as angry as he’d meant it; or at least, Joe was unfazed by it.

 

“Does this conversation feel like a power trip to you, Lev?”

 

“I never know with you. It could be.”

 

“But do you think it is?”

 

“M-maybe!”

 

“It’s not.”

 

“Oh, well if _you_ say so,” said Lev, sarcastic. He would have turned away, but Joe leaned forward and put his hand on his. Lev froze.

 

“Lev,” said Joe. “It’s not a power trip. I like you, Lev. I really do.”

 

“Oh,” said Lev. An alarm inside his brain went off and short-circuited directly to his groin, bypassing his higher-reasoning centers. “Okay.”

 

“And I want you to like me,” he continued, in a bizarrely earnest voice. “I don’t want you to hate me.”

 

The words were strangely childish. Lev stared into Joe’s slightly glazed eyes and tried to imagine him ever saying such a thing sober. He failed.

 

“Joe, how much have you been drinking?” asked Lev.

 

His eyes slid closed. Joe leaned back in his chair, drawing his hand away, exhaling laughter.

 

“Too much, obviously.” His hand reached, spasmodically, for the glass, but he didn’t raise it to his lips. “Did I say something to put you off? I’d apologize, but I’m not sure what an apology means if I don’t remember making it tomorrow morning.”

 

“N-no, I mean—” Lev fumbled for words. “Not tonight. Since you came to California.”

 

They stared at each other.

 

“Too much,” said Joe again, at last, distantly. His eyes lost focus, wandered, and then found Lev’s again. “But it’s good to see a familiar face.”

 

“Right,” he muttered noncommittally, and looked away, feeling awkward. He didn’t think he had ever talked this much with Joe in his life. And yet there was something inside him that felt this odd thrill of—pleasure? Satisfaction?—to be made into a confidant. To have someone—to have a _guy_ —sitting with him at a bar like this, talking with him like this, was what his dumber daydreams were made of. Lev had always wondered what it would be like to be drunk and in lust with a stranger, the way he read about in the wild stories of San Francisco. He was starting to believe that this, this whatever-it-was that he was sharing with Joe, might be the closest he would get.

 

It was a pretty sad state of affairs, Lev had to admit, but the edge of possibility in the idea pulled at him. He was probably, definitely, appallingly drunk to even find the idea attractive, but there it was.

 

When he lifted his eyes again, it took him a moment to realize that he was being stared at.

 

The man at the other end of the bar had the kind of face usually reserved for magazine ads, made ethereal by a drifting haze of cigarette smoke. Lev stared back. He couldn’t help it.

 

“Lev?” said Joe, and then, before Lev could think to avert his eyes, twisted to see what he was looking at.

 

Lev had been wrong. _He_ wasn’t the one being stared at all. The man across the bar smiled, very slowly, when he saw Joe looking back. His hair glimmered gold in the shifting lights of the bar. His body was taut, glistening as if oiled. He walked straight towards them. No, not them. Him. Joe.

 

“Don’t I know your face?” he asked. He sat on Joe’s other side, uninvited. He ignored Lev completely. “You were at Scotty’s earlier tonight. I saw you from across the bar.”

 

Joe leaned back. The sleek, intent look in his eyes was hidden by the creases of his smile. “You should have introduced yourself,” he suggested. There was oil and honey in his voice. “Why so shy?”

 

The blond man tipped his head back, his bare throat like an invitation. “Who’s being shy?” he asked challengingly, and Lev slipped off his stool and out into the night.

 

It had been pretty dumb to think that Joe Macmillan would want to talk to him for his own sake, just like it had been dumb to come here in the first place. No one would look twice at him if they had another choice, and it seemed like everyone had another choice. Back to the original plan, he thought dully, which was crushing on straight boys and hoping they didn’t notice—

 

The door opened again behind him. Lev stepped aside to let the other past, but it was Joe, Joe Macmillan, shrugging on his leather jacket and looking at him curiously.

 

“Where were you going in such a hurry?” he asked. Christ, he almost sounded like a normal person, like a friend, like a _boy_ friend.

 

A crazy impulse took over him then. At least, he was pretty sure it was crazy, but some part of his brain obviously thought it was an amazing idea, because Lev reached out to put his arms around Joe’s neck. There was only enough time to register a small spark of surprise in his eyes before their lips had met.

 

Lev was on tiptoe, his weight resting against Joe’s chest, his hands clutching for purchase on the nape of his neck. Beneath his mouth, Joe was soft with surprise, and then abruptly his arms came up and coiled around him. Lev felt consumed in that strength, one hand splayed over nearly the entire width of his shoulder blades and one creeping slowly up the back of his shirt. The pressure on his mouth was now intense, blinding. He was pretty sure his bones were warping from the heat of the kiss. It was quickly becoming clear what had been driving Cameron so crazy about this man.

 

They parted, eventually, after a million years. The night air felt cold afterwards. Lev stared.

 

“Let me take you home,” said Joe.

 

“Yeah,” said Lev, without thinking.

 

A smile pulled at his lips. “Let me drop you off at your home,” he clarified. Walking to the edge of the sidewalk, he raised his arm up and summoned a taxicab out of nowhere with a confident flick of his wrist.

 

“I live at Mutiny,” Lev blurted out.

 

Joe opened the back door of the cab for him.

 

“I know,” he said, as Lev fumbled inside. “What’s the address?”

 

They spent the cab ride in an awkward state of silence; pretty typical, Lev figured, for two people who had just been making out where one of them happened to be the life-ruining ex of the other one’s boss. Totally normal for the situation.

 

_Not_ that Lev wanted to be in this specific situation again—probably, definitely, unless maybe Joe wanted to show him what the underside of his sheets looked like next time—anyway—what had he just been thinking about?

 

Joe had the cab park down the street. Lev slithered out his door while Joe paid, feeling wobbly from several directions and thoroughly unequal to the task of climbing up the giant hill to the house that was Mutiny.

 

“It’s barely an incline,” said Joe, getting out of the cab himself.

 

“You climb it then,” said Lev.

 

“Alright,” said Joe calmly, and put his arm around Lev. He was warm and steady as he propelled them both up the hill. It was unfair, the way he could be drunk and still talk and walk and…and…other things. Lev lolled forward, thinking to himself that the night could have gone much worse. As a cheering thought, it had something lacking. At least he was sleeping in his own bed tonight, not that it had been his goal.

 

Joe stopped abruptly. Lev, who had been leaning against his shoulder without quite knowing how he had gotten there, opened his eyes. They were standing in front of a rambling old house. Despite the late hour, most of the lights were still on. Bad music and worse jokes drifted out of the half-open windows. The grass hadn’t been mowed since the last time Donna had scary-smiled one of the guys into doing it, but in a daring display of ambition, someone had staked out a garden below a window. The plants within straggled weedily upwards.

 

It was home. Joe sucked in a breath.

 

“So this is Mutiny,” he said faintly, as if echoing a memory. Midway through fumbling his keys out of his pocket, Lev hesitated.

 

“You can, uh, you can come in. Only if you want,” he added hastily.

 

Joe stared up into the lights of the house as if he wanted nothing more than to come in out of the dark.

 

“No,” he said. “I’d better go.”

 

“Yeah,” agreed Lev, torn between relief and disappointment. He trotted up the front. His hand on the handle, he hesitated. He turned around, driven by the reckless honesty of alcohol.

 

“Hey,” he shouted at Joe’s back. Joe turned halfway, one eye glittering at him in the flickering light and the other in darkness. “You’re…You’re a good person. Really.”

 

Something twisted in his expression. After a moment Lev realized that Joe was trying to smile, and for the first time that he had known him, not quite succeeding. He had turned now so that he was facing the house fully. Seen from above, he was much more vulnerable than he had ever seemed from his imposing height. His eyes glistened.

 

“I’m not,” he said. “But I’m glad I have one person fooled.”

 

And he turned his back and walked away down the hill. Lev watched him cross through the haloes of streetlamps, passing in and out of darkness, until the mist swallowed him up and he was out of sight.

**Author's Note:**

> Trying desperately to finish my Halt and Catch Fire fics before they get totally thrown out the window by season 3, oops.


End file.
